I had a disastrous night last night at the warlords X wing event, losing all 3 and only avoiding last place by margin of victory. It surprised me a bit given my list has preformed reasonably well on previous occasions.

I was running Echo (ACD, FCS, outmanoeuvre), doom shuttle and a delta with HLC.

During the event I was really cursing my luck, with the dice deserting me on numerous occasions, but after I had an epiphany about a fundamental flaw in the list - it rolls a lot of dice without having anything around to modify them, and my previous success was as much down to good luck as last night's losses were to bad luck.

I don't want a list that relies on luck. I'm happy to lose because I've been outplayed (it happens a lot), and I worry that last night I was perhaps a bit discourteous to my opponents when frustration with the dice got the best of me, when really the problem was with the list.

Therefore I'm on the look out for a new list, and was hoping this amazing community might be able tochelp me out. I want something tournament competitive, but still fun to play. I'm under no illusions that I'm likely to win anything, and for me tournaments is more about expanding the variety of people and lists I play against, but winning is fundamentally more fun than losing. I do like flying agile ships (phantom, interceptors, awings) but I'm not opposed to trying something new.

It also needs to be something I can build with my current collection, so that I can use it in tournaments. I have been working towards a one of everything collection, with a focus on the small ships. I have one of all small ship releases excluding the bomber and the z95 (including imperial aces), 2 starter sets and a shuttle. I also have money for one more purchase before Christmas, which I was saving for rebel aces.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Ben

Have you tried the Whisper + 5 ties build?

Or the Nationals List? Buzzsaw Whisper with Captain Yorr and Soontir?

How about this for a DPS build?

I'm missing a number of key upgrades from my collection. Not having a falcon or slave means I have no VI, engine upgrade or gunner. Also adrenaline rush is in the bomber expansion and I'm missing decoy and wingman due to not having a z95. I'm starting to think I've not got the cards to run a named phantom.

I'm not particularly looking for a way to make the ships I'm flying work (although that's good if someone's got a way I can do it), new ideas is great, I'm not tied to imperial either.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Ben

As general list building advice;

There are a lot of ways to modify Red dice, but only a few to modify Greens (only Focus and few pilot abilities), also Greens are more likely to roll blanks. This makes rolling green dice very risky compared to reds. So by lowering the number of green dice rolled in a game you lower your chance of being very lucky or very unlucky.

Choose ships that depend on hitpoints and not on agility to survive. Also shoot ships that have low agility and lots of hitpoints first (=situational) and your performance will be a lot more constant.

Having lots of ships (spreading the risks into many dice rolls) also increases your squads dependability.

Keep your same list and switch to using the dice app. Then you won't suffer less than average results.

Keep your same list and switch to using the dice app. Then you won't suffer less than average results.

Say what? Why would the dice app change the rolls?

If it's not randomizing results in the same way dice would, it shouldn't be used.

Although I don't like your "don't want to rely on luck"-attitude (part of the game is to take your chances and deal with the consequences) I sure like to help...

I think your most prominent failure in that list is the Delta with HLC; at PS 1 HLC just doesn't cut it - its too late to eliminate a threat or to set one up for the rest of the list to break (that's thre role of the Doomshuttle for example), esspecially if you are running a 3 ship list in which can ill affort turns in which nohting happens to your opponent.

My first suggestion would be this:

"Whisper" (32)
Fire-Control System (2)
Navigator (3)
Advanced Cloaking Device (4)

Omicron Group Pilot (21)
Darth Vader (3)

"Night Beast" (15)

"Mauler Mithel" (17)
Outmaneuver (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

The change from Echo to Wisper should mittigate the PS problem somewhat, as you are now above a lot of Imperial mid range pilots; Navigator should give you some of the unpredictable maneuvers despite not fiedling Echo.

Night Beast is good defensive option in lieu of the single point to make him Dark Curse; if flown correctly he should always have a Focus token and still be able to arc/range dodging via barrel roll. Mauler Mithel with OM is an awesome Range 1 fighter, 4 attack dice vs -1 agility isn't exaclty mitigating the effects of hot/cold dice but if you know how to maneuver him in position he can seriously hurt every un-turreted ship.

Doom Shuttle again as an option to deal the deathblow to any ship you have hurt with the other 3 ships around.

If you are in for something way more blunt:

Delta Squadron Pilot (30)
Ion Cannon (3)

"Mauler Mithel" (17)
Outmaneuver (3)

"Backstabber" (16)

"Dark Curse" (16)

"Night Beast" (15)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Same game with Mauler Mithel as before, but this time agumented by Backstabber as a flanker and Dark Curse as redundant (yet excellent defensive option). The Delta in this quintett is a Control option to maximize your potential when it comes to ustilizing Mauler and Backstabber.

(gave this list to my brother who is just starting out with X-Wing and he very nearly beat my tourney list)

I came in last place in my first tournament but had fun playing every round.

Take it as a learning experience. You are on the right track by seeking list and mechanics help with this thread.

Empire pilots lack dice modification like the Rebels but you can get some modification in there.

Whisper

FCS

Recon Specialist

ACD

OGP

Vader

Vessery

Unfortunately, your card upgrades are limiting your options.

Just a slight alteration to the original list drop the FCS for sensor jammer and turn your 37 point defender to 35 with Onyx with ion cannon for some control. Echo needs the protection of the jammer to be effective, and still gets ACD protection against most swarm lists.

Although I don't like your "don't want to rely on luck"-attitude (part of the game is to take your chances and deal with the consequences)

I want to pre-text this by promising you that I am not intending to troll you TC or to make you feel bad. It honestly sounds like the issue here is your willingness to accept or not accept that things sometimes won't go your way. Right now you think that by "optimizing" your list, you are going to get a better outcome than you did before. For all I know, you could be making tactical or positioning errors as well, and that is the "real" reason why you didn't succeed. I'm not sure that you are accepting the fact that sometimes you can have the best designed list in the world and things simply just aren't going to go your way. If you continue to blame your list, rather than the fact that stuff happens, its going to be even harder for you to swallow when it happens again. And it will. This is the nature of a game in which success is at least partly predicated on the results of randomized dice. Do yourself a favor. Don't play the game of scapegoating. Try to identify what the real reason is that you lost. Maybe its random dice roles. Maybe its skill. My point is that you won't make any progress towards getting wins so long as your list is what you think the problem is. It doesn't sound like it's the real problem to me.

I don't want a list that relies on luck.

Then maybe dice games aren't for you.

I don't want a list that relies on luck.

Then maybe dice games aren't for you.

I should have done my post in this one sentence. Gotta work on being more concise.

Being successful at dice games is about maximising the probabilities in your favour. analysing thus list mathematically and trying to be objective about my experiences over a few tournaments with this rough list shows me that it does little to adjust probabilities. It makes it very swingy to fly. In some games it's been spectacular, but in others it's totally whiffed. I am aware I'm not a great player, but I think in X wing, perhaps more than most games, you can tell when you're being out played because you keep finding yourself in positions where you have no attacks and your opponent can focus all if their fire on your juiciest target. last night, in all but one games, I felt I was getting into good positions and the dice completely failed. rather than just chalk this up to the duce and getting on with it, I looked at why that might happen and realised I was using my actions to arc dodge into those good positions but this would leave me with no tokens to affect probabilities. as such when I roll all blanks and eyeballs I'm perhaps not in a position to just blame the dice and move on. I'm not particularly looking to optimise the list I have, rather to find a new list idea that has a better balance to it.